Objective Fictions: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Marxism

by Adrian Johnston (Editor), Boštjan Nedoh (Editor), Alenka Zupančič (Editor)

Rethinking objectivity and fiction in contemporary philosophy and psychoanalysis – beyond the realism-nominalism divide When it comes to the question of objectivity in current philosophical debates, there is a growing prominence of two opposite approaches: nominalism and realism. By absolutising intersubjectivity, the nominalist approach is moving towards the abandonment of the very notion of truth and objective reality. For its part, the realist approach insists on the category of the object-in-itself as irreducible to any kind of subjective mediation. Despite their seeming mutual exclusiveness, both approaches share a fundamental presupposition, namely, that of a neat separation between the spheres of subjectivity and objectivity as well as between fiction and truth. This collection offers a rethinking of the relationship between objectivity and fiction through engaging with a series of ‘objective fictions’, including such topics as fetishes, semblances, lies, rumours, sophistry, fantasies and conspiracy theories. It does so through engagement with modern and contemporary philosophical traditions and psychoanalytic theory, with all of these orientations being irreducible to either nominalist or realist approaches. Adrian Johnston is Distinguished Professor and Chair at the Department of Philosophy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA. Boštjan Nedoh is a Research Fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute of Philosophy, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Alenka Zupančič is a Research Advisor at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute of Philosophy, Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Professor at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Genres: Philosophy

272 pages, Hardcover

Published December 29, 2021

About the author

American philosopher. He is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta. Johnston’s books are guided by his “transcendental materialism,” which in sum calls for a materialist ontology that nevertheless does not reduce away the gap or figure that is human subjectivity.